Robert Abele

I distinctly remember as a young boy thinking it’d be cool if one of those kids on Sesame Street just hauled off on a Muppet. Just because it was there, and vaguely unreal, and soft-looking, and because those fuzzy creatures were there to make you laugh anyway. It wasn’t hatred......

Two sports dynasties further cinched their televised destinies this past weekend — one a racket artist from Switzerland who merges ballet and physics when striking a ball on a tennis court, the other a digestive machine from Japan who combines precision and speed when scarfing franks. Do Roger Federer, who......

Last Thursday, Tom Cruise was showing the wear and tear of touring the world to promote Katie Holmes . . . er, I mean War of the Worlds . . . when he gave Today’s Matt Lauer a mouthful about the evils of electric-shock therapy and drugging kids. (Cruise, like......

At the beginning of the HBO documentary Twist of Faith: America Undercover, which was nominated earlier this year for an Academy Award and gets its television debut this Tuesday, firefighter Anthony Comes gives a personal video tour of his Toledo, Ohio, firehouse — courtesy of a camera provided to him......

Catching the last two hours of VH1’s five-hour series 100 Greatest Kid Stars the other night — namely No. 40 (Todd Bridges) through No. 1 (Todd’s co-star, Gary Coleman) — it was suddenly apparent how TV has moved cute child stars out of evenings and into the niche world of......

Photo by R. Sebree/FoxReality shows whose purpose is to anoint a new star in some profession — modeling, fashion design, kissing the ass of a cartoony real estate mogul — inevitably must decide if they care more about showcasing competitive squabbling or creativity. Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen, which started last week......

Like an unclean aquarium with especially boring fish, Britney and Kevin: Chaotic turns behind-the-scenes pop-star life into the most numbing of existences, and should handily drain all sex appeal from Top 40’s lip-synching Lolita. It certainly drives another nail into the coffin of “this is my life” reality TV, which......

The jury is out on whether Tom Cruise has the movie of the summer in The War of the Worlds, but it’s assured he made the talk-show appearance of the season with Oprah last week. He’s been turning up with the likes of Billy Bush on Access Hollywood to profess......

The opening moments of Empire Falls — three hours playing across Saturday and Sunday on HBO — could make you believe you’ve stumbled upon a new Ken Burns documentary. Wilford Brimley–ish voice-over and old-timey stills of Maine’s mill-city heyday, plus present-day shots of shuttered, vacant buildings, give the impression that......

24 took some hits earlier this year over its portrayal of a Muslim-American family as a terrorist cell, but for a show dependent on stoking viewers’ fears about the world we live in, it was a natural debate to have. Then in last week’s episode, we discovered that the liberal,......